


mastering the art of timing.

by skeletonannie



Series: another apple into pieces [5]
Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Gen, carmilla needs safe spaces, danny lawrence needs good things, danny/carmilla brotp, lawstein - Freeform, lawstein 2k15: brotp safe spaces
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-05
Updated: 2015-01-05
Packaged: 2018-03-05 11:17:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3118190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skeletonannie/pseuds/skeletonannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>lawstein brotp; love will have its sacrifices/sacrifices learn how to love</p>
            </blockquote>





	mastering the art of timing.

You had been running for probably hours when Kirsch finally caught you.  He looked distraught, his usually open face pinched and very sad.

            “Danny,” and you knew something had happened because there was no stupid nickname, “I—we found—you gotta come to the Lustig,” and he grabbed your wrist and pulled you in the opposite direction. 

            You didn’t want to go back there.  You don’t like to think about that place.  It makes your stomach clench and your palms sting, but Kirsch was frantic, so you ran along beside him.

            The Lustig building was essentially rubble with a roof.  You felt your legs stutter and Kirsch turned quickly, reaching for your wrist again. 

            “I know, Danny, I know, but—please,” and then you were running across the charred entryway into the shadowy ruin.  The little balls of light—courtesy of the Alchemy Club—still floated around the perimeter, giving the building an ethereal look. If you weren’t about to throw up, it would’ve been beautiful.

            _Blood on your knuckles and between your teeth Laura’s screaming there is a torso at your feet you don’t want to look at her because you are dirty you are a monster but the Light is so strong and Laura is so tiny Laura is so good she doesn’t deserve this she is too good—tears are in her eyes and Carmilla looks like penance you can taste metal against your tongue there is ash on your skin your shoulders are rippling because there is a monster beneath your skin don’t jump don’t jump don’t—_

“Danny!” Kirsch’s hands were around your waist, holding you up.  He gently cupped your cheek, “It’s over, Danny, it’s over, Laura’s safe, we did it, just—just breathe, okay Psycho Society?”

            You shuddered out a breath and tried to smile, nodded your head, shook him off.  He wrinkled his nose and shrugged, leading you to the pit.

            “I—me and the bros were throwing cherry bombs, kind of like a final ‘hey fuck you,’ I guess, but—the flashes lit up the bottom of the pit, and—” he shook his head, ran a hand through his hair.  “Shit, Danny, I think—I think she’s down there.”

            You felt your stomach heave.  It had been a week.  It had been seven days, and she had been under the earth _alone_ and covered in blood.  You clenched your eyes shut, your hands balled into fists.  Kirsch nudged you.

            “We need to get down there,” he had said, very quietly.  You nodded and squared your shoulders, tried to contain the white hot rippling down your spine, but—why?         

            “Stand back a bit, Kirsch,” you had grit out, before your back cracked and you had felt your jaw shift.  You didn’t shift all the way, because you had needed your opposable thumbs, so you were halfway between human and monster and Kirsch had looked at you in frightened awe.

            “Dude,” he whispered, and you let out a low growl, advancing on the pit. “I—we got some rope, Lupin,” he had tossed you a looped end.

            The pit was black and ashy, soot quickly covering you.  Another low growl, and then you had slid down the embankment. Blinking slowly, you had let your eyes adjust to the darkness, and with a heavy jolt you saw a tiny figure, crooked and shadowy.  You could smell blood, and burnt flesh, and something heavier, darker, that made your stomach heave.

            She was _tiny_.  In your arms she was even smaller.  Her right side was crushed, and had crunched sickeningly when you held her to your shaking body.  Another low growl, keening, had worked its way from your throat, and Kirsch had shouted down, “Are you all good, Danny?  That whine sounded—well, my dog does that when my mom leaves.” You had roughly shaken your head and barked out an, “I’m good, Kirsch,” trying not to cry.

            Her hands and forearms had burned down to the bone.  There was a bone sticking out of her shoulder. Her face was nearly unrecognizable for all the blood and bruising.  Your tears had left little bouquets in the soot and blood on her face, streaking through the sad grime.

            “Oka—” you had tried again, clearing your throat roughly.  “Okay, Kirsch, start pulling,” and you had placed your feet surely and steadily, shielding the tiny broken body from the jagged edges of the pit, cradling her softly, saying very gentle things quietly into her forehead. At the lip of the pit, Kirsch and his Zeta bro Allen had rushed forward to help you over, and they had been so careful, so gentle, lay her down in the rubble, turned away and pretended they couldn’t see you crying.

            You painfully shifted back, fully human, and cried into your sleeve. She finally looked eighteen.

            Kirsch helped you bundle her back into your arms, and you had jogged to Laura’s dorm, trying to keep the jostling to a minimum.  She didn’t move, didn’t whimper, her head lolling in your arms.

            _Laura hits the ground hard and her screams are shredding your chest and Carmilla is shrouded in light like a dream like an angel sent to raze and Laura keeps screaming screaming screaming in the Light a small girl with a white dress opens her arms blood drips into your eye Perry stakes another vampire something sharp and white hot tears at your arm so you grab the vampire and rip its head off blood under your nails but Carmilla has jumped and Laura won’t stop screaming—_

            “Perry, open the door!” you had been pretty sure your heartbeat was thudding hard enough to press a tattoo into your ribs and Carmilla had not moved and your shoulders and spine kept rippling because this is too much for a human to endure this is—

            “Danny Lawrence, have you ever heard of knocking?  I expected a little more tact—” but Perry had stopped short when she saw the bloody, crooked mess in your arms.  “Oh, my,” she had whispered, before looking at you with a very soft look, motherly.  “Danny,” she reached out and delicately traced Carmilla’s wrist, before she shook herself and went into momma mode.  “Right, okay, so here’s what we do.  Danny, you get LaFontaine to gather all of their first aide material and come to Laura’s room. I’m going to warn Laura, and hopefully prevent cardiac arrest.”

            You had nodded before passing through the doorway while Perry had bustled out. LaFontaine had turned very white, and then they had gotten the same look they had worn on the suicide mission to the library and heaved a huge first aide bag from under Perry’s bed.

            With a glance at Carmilla, they had whispered, “This is bad,” and you hated to agree.

            You had tried to be as gentle as you could, but Carmilla’s body still made a sickening crunch when you placed her on Laura’s bed.  Laura had whimpered and Perry looked a little green, but LaFontaine—bless their bio major soul—had seemed unfazed, and had gotten to work.

            _A ringing in your ears vibrating down your arms this is not the way the story goes this is not how this ends but there is rubble under your feet and Laura has not gotten up and you see Kirsch spear a vampire with his trident and there is blood everywhere how did she survive in this much blood for decades you can hardly see through the red haze and you can smell burning and you can taste ash and you want to leave you want to go home and never wake up after this Laura is so tiny under your arm she is very small and very sad so you pick her up and you hug her tightly to your chest as she thrashes and screams only one word over and over again and nothing has ever hurt this much—_

“Blood! She needs blood!” Laura had been frantic, and it had broken your heart all over again to see that she had kept a full stock of blood in the fridge.  How to love a monster.

            Carmilla needed a lot more than blood, you had thought, and you had been right, because Laura poured half a carton into Carmilla’s ashen mouth and she had not moved.

            LaFontaine looked very sad and very frustrated, and you had let another keening whine escape when their head shot up and their eyes went wide.

            “Danny,” they had whispered, “she needs _blood_.”

            A very unpleasant swooping had sent your stomach to your knees when you realized what they had meant, but you had nodded slowly and reached for the scissors in the first aide kit.

            “Laura,” you had gently nudged her aside but she hadn’t even looked at you. You would get used to that.

            It had hurt, a lot, and your flesh made a strange sound as the scissors tore a jagged line down your forearm.  You pressed your arm to her mouth, jaw clenched and tears in your eyes as Laura had watched from behind you, clutching at your t-shirt.  Your blood had dripped over her jaw, spilling out the corners of her mouth and down her chin, her neck.  It had mixed with the soot and grime, macabre baptisms and then there were teeth in your arm and an ancient groan vibrating through the wound.

            And you had sighed, your knees gave out, you hit the ground hard, but her hands pulled at your wrist, held you to her mouth, and for a moment you smiled.

            You had woken up a few hours later, groggy and sore.  Carmilla had been in Laura’s bed, lying on her side watching you from across the room.  You had groaned, rubbed at your eyes, yelped at the burning pain in your forearm. She grimaced, you saw, and then she looked at you very seriously.

            “Thank you, Shrek.”

            You had laughed until sobs pulled heavy at your ribs and she did the same.

 

 

“Fuck _you,_ Xena,” she growls, and you see her shoulders ripple, her lips twist in a snarl. Her eyes are black and her spine shudders, once, twice—

            “Fuck _me?_ Fuck _you_ , Garfield, and your immoral vampire shit!  Is this a _game_ to you?” You’re bristling, jaw clenching hard, and you feel your palms tingling.  “This is real shit!  These are people’s _lives!_ ”

            “Oh, don’t get all self-righteous on me now, pup.  This is just the way the world works; learn to deal or get off the boardwalk.”

            “I’m not going to stand for this—this absolute _abomination_! You’re a monster, and you always will be—”

            “Takes one to know one, Lurch,” and she sounds so _smug_ that you can’t stop yourself, and suddenly you’re on top of her, wrestling her into a headlock.  She squeals and tumbles backward, the game pieces going skittering across the floor. She shoves her handful of paper money in your face, stuffing them into your mouth and you growl, biting into the money. It tears in your mouth and you spit out the soggy coloured paper, smiling when it lands on her cheek.

            “You disgusting _dog,”_ she spits, grabbing your hair and flipping you over.  The game board flips over onto Laura’s lap and you hear a mighty sigh.

            “Eat me, Cullen.”

            “I would rather _die,”_ she drawls, pinning your wrists above your head with one hand and giving you a whet willy with the other. You squirm, try to buck her off, but she just smirks and presses her hips harder into your stomach.

            “Honestly, you two are children,” Laura sighs from the floor, the game board still upturned on her lap.  She rolls her eyes and heaves another long-suffering sigh.  “Let me know when you decide to act your age—” a very pointed glare at Carmilla, who simply shrugs and flicks your nose—“and we can try this again.  I swear, Monopoly should not keep ending like this.”

 

 

Sometimes, after running, you both will lie in the field behind the mountains and stare at the sky.  At first, this was strictly an animal-form thing, but one time, after a very bad trigger-y day, Carmilla had tugged you into the forest, shifted, and ran to the field before collapsing in on herself and shifting back in a puff of smoke.  You stayed in wolf form, nosing her side, and she clenched her fists, pressed them into her eyes, took shuddery, painful breaths.  You pressed your cold nose to her cheek and she let out this watery chuckle that—yeah. So many things about her existence break your heart, and this is one of them.  You whined, low in your throat, and she finally reached up and twined her hands through your fur, pressed her face into the scruff of your neck. She was shaking, and you didn’t know if it was from the centuries pressing into her spine or the unbearable lightness of simply _being_ here.

            She exists in so many spaces, and you often wonder how she can even breathe under the weight of all the people she’s been before this. So now, when you run to the field, you stay wolf and she sits with her head on your stomach or your front paws and you both stay silent until she works up the courage to say what is tearing at her throat.  And you stay very still, and she tries not to shake, and sometimes she cries.  Sometimes she laughs, too.

 

 _"I'm so sorry" is all you can say but she can't hear you anymore you whisper it anyway into her hair and her wrists and the back of her neck but she doesn't move she stays very still staring hard at the bed across the room the yellow pillow clutched heavily in her small hands "I'm so sorry" but you can still feel the rippling beneath your skin and taste the blood and ash and you should have known: penance always leaves a mark._            

 

You remember when you felt so much all at once for Laura; tiny tiny gay Laura, curious to a fault and far too good. You felt _so much_ , but then you saw Carmilla’s face as she turned to see Laura one last time, tears in her eyes and palms on fire, and you knew what you felt was overwhelming, but it would never— _never_ —measure up to _that._

            She burned herself up for a love she didn’t even think she deserved. So you pulled her out of a pit and you gave her your blood and you let her tremble when she feels her skin splitting open and you watch her love, watch her trace her own wrists with trembling fingers and awe.  She looks at Laura like something holy, and you know that she’s slowly starting to believe in forgiveness, in the softness of palms, in the beats between breaths.

            She’s a lying, cheating asshole when it comes to Monopoly, though.

**Author's Note:**

> i have such a soft spot for lawstein like those stupid idiot babies would be so good for each other safe spaces are so important, esp for lil bby carm, & esp outside of laura. grow! & yall know danny would be so careful with carm bc she knows what she means to laura & then bc she learns abt carm's cupboards & protective!danny can't help herself.
> 
> LAWSTEIN BROTP 2K15
> 
> also hey guys come hang out w me on tumblr siimulacra.tumblr.com


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